Mr. Gibson came back two steps at a time; he was carrying the
half-awakened child in his arms. He did not scruple to rouse him into
yet further wakefulness--did not grieve to hear him begin to wail and
cry. His eyes were on the figure upon the bed, which at that sound
quivered all through; and when her child was laid at her back, and
began caressingly to scramble yet closer, Aimée turned round, and
took him in her arms, and lulled him and soothed him with the soft
wont of mother's love.
Before she lost this faint consciousness, which was habit or instinct
rather than thought, Mr. Gibson spoke to her in French. The child's
one word of "maman" had given him this clue. It was the language
sure to be most intelligible to her dulled brain; and as it
happened,--only Mr. Gibson did not think of that--it was the language
in which she had been commanded, and had learnt to obey.
Mr. Gibson's tongue was a little stiff at first, but by-and-by he
spoke it with all his old readiness. He extorted from her short
answers at first, then longer ones, and from time to time he plied
her with little drops of wine, until some further nourishment should
be at hand. Molly was struck by her father's low tones of comfort and
sympathy, although she could not follow what was said quickly enough
to catch the meaning of what passed.
By-and-by, however, when her father had done all that he could, and
they were once more downstairs, he told them more about her journey
than they yet knew. The hurry, the sense of acting in defiance of
a prohibition, the over-mastering anxiety, the broken night, and
fatigue of the journey, had ill prepared her for the shock at last,
and Mr. Gibson was seriously alarmed for the consequences. She had
wandered strangely in her replies to him; he had perceived that she
was wandering, and had made great efforts to recall her senses;
but Mr. Gibson foresaw that some bodily illness was coming on,
and stopped late that night, arranging many things with Molly and
the Squire. One--the only--comfort arising from her state was the
probability that she would be entirely unconscious by the morrow--the
day of the funeral. Worn out by the contending emotions of the day,
the Squire seemed now unable to look beyond the wrench and trial of
the next twelve hours. He sate with his head in his hands, declining
to go to bed, refusing to dwell on the thought of his grandchild--not
three hours ago such a darling in his eyes. Mr. Gibson gave some
instructions to one of the maid-servants as to the watch she was to
keep by Mrs. Osborne Hamley, and insisted on Molly's going to bed.
When she pleaded the apparent necessity of her staying up, he said,--